Sant Joan de Déu Research Institute

The study of psychedelic drugs in pharmacological treatments had its eureka moment with chemist Albert Hofmann's famous bike ride under the influence of LSD in 1938 and then developed over decades, but with Richard Nixon it was shelved. In recent years, it has resurfaced in hospitals and laboratories around the world. Last week, the Congress of Deputies hosted a conference on these substances. We explain what they are, what they are used for, the current state of research, and their risks, with the help of expert sources.

Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is responsible for the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca. According to the results of a phase IIa clinical trial published in Nature Medicine, this molecule improved depressive symptoms in adults with depression after one dose. The trial included 34 people, 17 of whom received intravenous DMT. This second group showed greater improvements in depressive symptoms than the control group. After two weeks, in the second part of the trial, DMT was administered to all participants and the antidepressant effects lasted for three months. Adverse effects were mainly pain at the injection site, nausea and transient anxiety.

Babies' brains specialise in their native language from pregnancy, according to a study carried out in France. The research team used encephalograms to measure the brain activity of 33 infants born to French-speaking mothers while listening to a story in French, English or Spanish. The results provide "the most compelling evidence to date that language experience already shapes the functional organization of the infant brain, even before birth," the authors write in Science Advances.